test-drb October 2004

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

245 participants
540 discussions

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Joe R." <rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com> > >At 02:55 PM 10/27/04 +0000, you wrote: >>On Wed, 2004-10-27 at 09:35 -0400, Joe R. wrote: >>> Jules, >>> >>> I'd love to hear what kind of hardware, software and manuals you got with >>> your's. >>> >>> Joe >> >>I'll have a look and see if I can do some sort of inventory. >> >>We've got a series 1 machine as it turns out too (blue case) > > AFIK all of the MDS2xxs (including the blue ones) are series II machines. >I've never heard of anything that Intel designated as a Series I. Most of >the Series II machines have blue cases but some of them have white cases. >The white ones are thought to be later machines but no one knows for sure. >Just to further confuse the issue, ANY of the MDS2xxs can be upgraded to >series III by adding a 8086 Resident Processor Card. I believe the MDS800s >can also be upgraded to Series III the same way. > > Joe I also never heard the term Series I while working there. It was always MDS800 and Series II or III. I believe Joe is correct that one can run a 8086 in the MDS800 as well as any of them. I have never seen a MDS800 in anything other than blue. I've seen a white Series II but I don't know if they were from any specific time period. All the ones we used internally were blue. I believe I saw a gray one as well. Two things were problems with the Series II machines. The early ones did not have shielding and metal coating in the keyboard case. These were very succeptable to static discharge from the operator. The Series II IOC board had a slow serial rate. Most simply modified the setup of the clock rate in the ROM's to get the higher serial rate for the built in terminal. > >- I always >>thought it belonged to one of the group, but apparently it is owned by >>the museum. I'll have a look-see as to exctly what that one is too (I >>know there's no docs or disks with that machine though) >> >>cheers >> >>Jules >> >> >

19 years, 10 months

new find: an Intel MDS 800

by melamy＠earthlink.net

I concur with Joe, there never was a series I. The mds800 was the first development system (not counting the Intellec 8). What Siemens did though was contract with Intel to produce a "Siemens" development system which was of course just a different color Series II machine. They were off white and carried the Siemens logo. -----Original Message----- From: "Joe R." <rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com> AFIK all of the MDS2xxs (including the blue ones) are series II machines. I've never heard of anything that Intel designated as a Series I. Most of the Series II machines have blue cases but some of them have white cases. The white ones are thought to be later machines but no one knows for sure. Just to further confuse the issue, ANY of the MDS2xxs can be upgraded to series III by adding a 8086 Resident Processor Card. I believe the MDS800s can also be upgraded to Series III the same way. Joe

19 years, 10 months

new find: an Intel MDS 800

by melamy＠earthlink.net

as for the DC37 on the back (yes, they do consider it a d-sub style connector). The more important question is what the two bottom cards are in the card cage. They are normally a two board disk controller from Intel (bit slice processor). As long as the controller was made by Intel, then the DC37 pinout should be compatible with this hardware or Intel's. I seem to recall a company called Zendex that made compatible items for the MDS series. Intel made a MDS220 and a MDS230. In either one, you could make a choice as to the density of the internal drive. As I said before, if there is a 50 pin ribbon cable between the back board (IOC) and the drive, then it is wired for SD. If an internal cable comes from the front to the disk drive, then it is wired as DD. I have both types of cables at home... About your comment on monitor troubleshooting. I have the schematic set for the Ball Brothers monitor that was usually used in the MDS2XX series. The nice thing about the monitor is that it is very simple. There is no fancy monitor control chip in it, in fact it doesn't even have any chips on it if I recall correctly. The monitor was usually supplied by Ball Brothers or Zenith. The back IOC supplies +12V poower, vertical, horizontal, and video intensity signals for display. By the way, the top card with all the switches on it is the CPU card. There were three versions of it that I know of. The first was 8080 based and only had 32K on it. I believe the remaining two versions were 8085 based with the first having 32K and the final one having 64K. If you only have 16 ram chips on your cpu board, then the next card down would or should be a 32K ram card. best regards, Steve Thatcher (one of the other MDS guys) -----Original Message----- From: Scott Stevens <chenmel(a)earthlink.net> > >The internal drive could be either SD or DD. If there is a 50 pin ribbon >connecting the drive to the back board in the system, then you have an >internal single density drive. If there is a cable running from one of the >front cards to the drive, then it has been hooked up as double density. > Actually, there's an added-in non-Intel jack on the back (I think 37 pin 'D' shaped but as everybody knows, probably not a 'Dsub' due to size) that the external dual-8" floppy enclosure plugs into. I suspect the system may have had something third-party added to support the two external drives, and some of the disks are labeled to indicate they are 'higher' density than the internal drive will support.

19 years, 10 months

new find: an Intel MDS 800

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Scott Stevens" <chenmel(a)earthlink.net> > >I recently acquired an exciting new (old) machine, an Intel MDS 800, >known as the 'Blue Box.' It's the 1975-era 8080 based box that kicked >off CP/M. > >My particular machine was intended as an 8051 ICE box, it has the 8051 >emulator pod and external PROM programmer. > >The system came complete with a big box of what appears to be complete >docs and a lot of software on 8" disks. There are four or more >different versions of IRIS, a disk labeled 'CPM' which I hope is a >boot disk, and multiple versions of other Intel tools, including the >targeted 8051 development tools. > >I paid a fair amount for this system, and am going to go slowly at >bringing it up. It's been stored a long time and there's a troubling >amount of surface rust on some of the screw heads and exposed >hardware. > >I've popped it open and some of the ICs (mostly TTL) have corrosion on >the leads. I have a few opening questions for others who have >restored hardware in similar condition: should I remove the corrosion >on IC leads, or do I run the risk of 'removing' the leads. The >circuit boards look really good, so worst-case I will replace some of >the chips. Hi Scott First, make sure you can find a replacement device and then wiggle or squeeze the lead a little with some needle nose. If it crushes or fails, replace the chip. The problem is that may IC's used iron cores and the solder plate would actually cause electrolysis and rot the core out of the lead. > >What is the opinion about this kind of servicing? The chips in >question are all (so far as I have investigated) common 7400 series >(some Schottky) TTL gates. Do people consider it as 'damaging' to the >'credentials' of a piece of classic hardware to replace chips with >others with significantly different date codes? I rate making it work more important than date codes. Still, most often when I buy onesy-twossies, I get them >from some surplus place and they have old date codes anyway. > >This is going to be a long term project for me, I fear, because I want >to do it right. This machine has a built-in CRT display so I might be >forced to do some (something I almost always refuse to do these days) >video monitor troubleshooting. > >The machine has a built-in 8" floppy, which I assume is the >low-density original, and an expansion case (third party) with two >newer and higher density drives. > >Is there a source for new or NOS 8" floppies out there? One thing for >certain that I'll be doing early after getting this machine up and >running is a backup of all the media that came with it (a fair amount, >probably 30-50 disks, many of which are Intel branded originals). > >Lots more questions and comments likely to come on this project. > >Scott > > Hi Scott I used to use both the Series II's and the MDS800's as well when I worked at Intel in the late 70's. I wrote some code in both assembler and PL/M. Both the Series II and the 800's could run the same software. Of course, if the software was for a '86 processor, you'd need a board with that on it. When looking at the boards, don't confuse the IOC board with the main processor for the system. The IOC board has a 8085 on it but it only runs the various I/O functions. The main processor will be one of the cards on the multi-buss slots. The main processor could have been a 8080, 8085 or a 8086. This all depends on what it came with. I have both a Series II and a MDS800 at home but I've not found time to play with them. I can only play with one at a time. They are on my list to play with. I have a number of disk ( about 60-80 someplace ) and a pile of documents. I still need to catalog what I have but not gotten to it. One thing that would be great, would be to find the bits and pieces that make up the user library. There was a lot of good stuff there. I have some listing from the library and may have information on disk as well but like I say, I just haven't gotten to them yet. Also, Joe, I think I have an extra Series II keyboard. Since I've not had a chance to check things out, I may only have one working unit. Still, these are really good keyboards and are not likely to have problems. They use the hall effect switches so there is no mechanical problems other than the springs. Dwight

19 years, 10 months

Digital Research Concurrent DOS/386 2.0 ....

by daniel＠cavs.msstate.edu

Hello, I saw a newsgroup posting where you mentioned having the binary images of this version of Concurrent DOS. I'm an antique OS collector, and I was wondering if you still have this files, and if so would you be willing to share them? If you are, could you kindly upload them to the following server: ftp://ps2supersite.homedns.org/incoming I have many old OSes that I would be will to share with you as well, so ask and I'll see if I have it! Thank you, Daniel Hamilton

19 years, 10 months

YAAYD (Yet another "Ten (0A) year" discussion) (was: GOPHER

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "der Mouse" <mouse(a)Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > >>> Many on this list [but not me] consider current WinTel machines to >>> suitable for anything. > >Well, I wouldn't go that far. But I have two peecee machines. > >> Yes, I think the risk is low. Even if they had such a machine, they >> would, most likely, be embarrassed to state that to the group, > >:-) I'm not embarrassed to say I have them. After all, one of them is >the machine I've been trying to write a KA630 emulator on! (The other >one exists principally to store my ripped-CD collection - as soon as I >buy a CD I rip it.) Hi der Mouse I'll have to admit that I have a couple as well. Still, if something broke on one, I'd not have any ill feelings about sending it off to the recycler and making a trip to Fry's to replace it. It is just a toaster to me. I treasure some of my other machines. Dwight

19 years, 10 months

update for classiccmp.org mirror of bitsavers

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

FYI; The classiccmp.org mirror of bitsavers used to just mirror the pdf section. As of this morning it now mirrors the entire bitsavers archive, not just the pdfs. You can access the mirror at www.classiccmp.org/bitsavers Jay

19 years, 10 months

[Fwd: Re: Intel iPDS 100 boot disks / software?]

by dmabry＠mich.com

I'll send this again. Sorry to repeat, but it may have been missed. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Intel iPDS 100 boot disks / software? Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 14:15:35 -0400 From: Dave Mabry <dmabry(a)mich.com> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> References: <000501c4b7be$9153bd30$bbed1fac(a)ntdev.corp.microsoft.com> I have put together some teledisk images of system disks for the iPDS. I can e-mail them to you. You have to be able to run Teledisk on a PC with a 5 1/4" HD drive to create a boot diskette for the iPDS from the images. If you are game to try that, let me know and I'll e-mail you the image to try. They were created on a 16MHz 386SX machine, if that matters. Sometimes Teledisk is particular to the cpu it is running on. Glen Slick wrote: > Anyone know where I can get some boot disks and other software for an > Intel iPDS 100? > >

19 years, 10 months

access to BIOS of DECpc

by GOOI＠oce.nl

Hi Dave, I *was* looking for OnTrack Disk Manager. The manufacturer specific versions only work when they detect a drive of their own brand, otherwise the software simply stops. I found on the Internet the OnTrack version for IBM, Fujitsu, MicroScience and Western Digital. The drive I tried to "manage" is from HP ... I received from Pete an OnTrack version (original) which works with *all* disks ... I won the auction on eBay so in a few days/weeks I'll have the original documentation/manual too. I can scan the manual if anybody is interested. The version from eBay is 7.0? Contact off-list if anybody is interested (gooiAToceDOTnl). I appreciate your work, Dave, but the disk already runs perfectly. thanks anyway, - Henk, PA8PDP. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of David Woyciesjes > Sent: woensdag 27 oktober 2004 15:39 > To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Re: access to BIOS of DECpc > > > Well I finally found the disk manager floppies I was > thinking of... > Ontrack DiskManager v.2.4 dated 6/12/98 (mfg. for IBM) > Ontrack DiskManager v.? dated 1/8/99 (my note says something > about Quantum?) > Western Digital EZ Drive v.8.01W dated 1995 - 1996 > > ...of course, I don't have the e-mail address of who was looking for > them. Or maybe there's an appropriate FTP server to drop the files on? > I created images using RAWREAD on a windows PC. Sorry, > it's all I have at them moment... > > -- > --- Dave Woyciesjes > --- ICQ# 905818

19 years, 10 months

access to BIOS of DECpc

by GOOI＠oce.nl

A short update on my efforts ... The Fujitsu-OnRack version did what was to be expected: it checks and sees that there is no Fujitsu drive in the PC and stops :-) Sorry to say that the version from Pete is for Western Digital drives and shows the same behaviour :-( I found a gfew manufacturer versions, but not for HP &%$#@!& However, there is till hope at 2 fronts: the version Dave will dig up, and there is one on auction at eBay (for just a few $$). If I will be the lucky winner I will share the data on the disk with everybody that is interested in a copy. It looks like this is an *original* OnTrack version that works with drives of any manufacturer. It's version 7 ... I'll report back later. thanks for all the help, - Henk, PA8PDP. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Sent: 22-10-2004 17:55 Subject: Re: access to BIOS of DECpc Apologies, I didn't get a chance to look for my OnTrack Disk Manager software last night. I'll definitely dig it up this weekend... Gooijen H wrote: > Hi all, > > thanks for all the responses, I have some leads now. > Here is a report what I tried so far. > Searching the Internet, I found the setup files set320p and pwr320p for > the DECpc 320P. Alas, the setup allows several items to be configured, > but the hard disk is not one of them! > Next, I found Ontrack DiskManager versions for IBM and for Microscience, > but the IBM version stops because it does not detect a hard disk of their > brand. BTW, my 2.5" hard disk is from HP, type C2965A. > The Microscience version allows 7 different types to be set, but up till > now I did not get satisfactory results. I can get to 50 Mb, but compared > to the original hard disk (40Mb) that is not much gain, especially when > you think that the C2965A is 420 Mb ...! > > I also have the version from Western Digital, EZ-Drive (Data Lifeguard) > but this version also stops because the disk is not from WD. > Not yet tried is a version from Fujitsu, and the version I received from > Pete (thanks Pete!). > I guess it's clear what I will be doing this weekend :-) > > thanks for all the help and advice, > - Henk, PA8PDP. > -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818

19 years, 10 months

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test-drb October 2004